The present invention relates generally to cabinets useful in kitchens, bathrooms and laundry rooms and, more particularly, to those cabinets having a single door opening from the top.
The prior art teaches a wide variety of storage cavities with equally variant structures determined by the location of their use. Some cabinets employ their upper horizontal surface as a work surface and thus provide access to the cabinet through doors or the like provided in the front or side surfaces thereof. Cabinets such as those employed as house washing machines provide an access door located on the upper horizontal surface which is conventionally hinged at a point adjacent the rear portion thereof and which does open from the front wall and backward toward the rear wall of the cabinet. In all instances respecting the cabinets bearing the above design, it has been found that children can easily gain access to the interior thereof, with the frequent result that injury may be caused by involvement with the mechanism or other dangerous instruments located within the cabinet.
Various child-proof cabinet designs have been proposed to attempt to reduce the incidence of injury to children in the above manner. In this connection, my copending application, Ser. No. 661,369 proposed a cabinet having a design wherein access is gained by the opening of a door hingably secured to the topmost surface thereof by the placement of the hinge adjacent the frontmost vertical panel of the cabinet. Thus, it is required to reach over toward the rear of the cabinet to enable the grasping of the door by a handle provided thereon to pull the door up toward the front of the cabinet. This design effectively placed access to such a cabinet out of the reach of children, thereby restricting accessibility of dangerous and harmful instruments.
Accordingly, the present invention comprises a further development of the above referenced copending application.